Are Collectivistic Leaders Necessary for Fluid Virtual Teams? A Multilevel Configurational Approach

Leadership research has predominantly relied on variable-centered approaches to examine the main and interactive effects of individual attributes on leadership emergence and effectiveness. Although informative, these approaches cannot reveal distinct patterns of attributes that lead to the same leadership outcomes, and they may systematically underestimate the relevance of certain attributes. One such attribute may be psychological collectivism, one’s positive orientation toward groups. We take a configurational approach to examine which configurations of psychological collectivism facets and power and achievement motives explain leadership emergence in fluid virtual teams. We further investigate whether team members who emerge as leaders are also effective—and specifically whether collectivistic team members are subject to leader under-emergence, that is, being effective leaders who rarely emerge. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with data from 223 students across 54 teams participating in a time-critical problem-solving simulation, we identify three emergent leader profiles: the Conformist (a low-level collectivist with low power motivation), the Pragmatist (a medium-level collectivist with strong achievement motives), and the Steward (a high-level collectivist with strong power and achievement motives). Our findings reveal that teams achieve superior performance when either the Steward or the Pragmatist but not the Conformist are part of the team and the team focuses on action but not interpersonal processes. This research advances the understanding of leadership emergence and effectiveness in virtual fluid teams by introducing a novel multilevel configurational approach.